Thank God he slipped into the backyard, where my husband’s friends had gathered and had set some logs ablaze in the fire pit. There, they chatted about the latest Frontline they had seen, what was in Harper’s that month, their favorite Kenzaburo Oe novel, and I believe someone even made a nearly funny joke about foreign policy. The fire crackled, spit, and warmed everyone. My husband and his friends looked into the orange glare and reflected.
In the living room, where my friends gathered, I did my monkey impression, my best friend’s husband threw himself on the carpet and then performed the best Worm any of us had ever seen, and we talked loudly about how excited we were to watch the Anna Nicole Smith Christmas special that was going to be on in six minutes because we had seen on previews that her toothless cousin Shelly got naked in a hot tub and then threw a couple of punches at guests at Anna Nicole’s party in a “Holiday Brawl.” My dog, who could not be coaxed outside, farted. We all laughed and two of us snorted in glee like little pigs.
Sadly, Shelly did not get naked but merely exposed her panties and growled, “Okay, who’s gonna get me laid?” After no takers came forth, she rolled her low self-esteem into her fists and fought two girls who tried to comfort her, knocking them both down like a bear with one swipe of her paw. All that with her panties showing. It was entertainment gold.
Right when Shelly was in the middle of her One Woman Hillbilly Smackdown, one of my husband’s friends, Blythe, walked through the living room on her way to the bathroom.
“Oh,” she said curiously at the sight of crazy cousin Shelly in panties throwing girls into walls as Anna Nicole wailed at her to “chill out.” “What show is this?”
Now, although every single head in that room turned toward Blythe, no one said a word. It simply wasn’t our responsibility. If she didn’t know, it wasn’t really up to us to tell her. You see, our Christmas party, as it had done every year previous, split like a cell and formed two separate parties almost immediately: my husband’s group in the backyard was the Dull and Smart Party, where you would probably be forced to learn something or make a donation to a nonprofit before you left, and in the living room was the Fun and Stupid Party, where you would gossip, watch a drunk hillbilly go crack-ass crazy on TV, and mock the Smart Party without pity.
You see, it was too easy. Blythe had entered the territory of the Stupid Party, and it was indeed a rich and seductive land. Outside, the Smart partygoers shivered and huddled close to the fire, inhaling smoke and making them all smell like singed hair. Inside, our fire roared heartily in the fireplace, but it was clearly for a decorative element and we had a chimney, thus avoiding black lung. Outside, they sat on wooden chairs or the firewood, or they stood up. Inside, we had upholstered furniture. Outside, there was talk. Inside, there was Anna Nicole and laughter, glorious laughter. And we were far closer to the food. It would have been too easy crack open our world like an egg, claim Blythe and taint her as our own. The lure, once we exposed it, would have been irresistible, and despite her job as the director of a social-service agency, we would have had her cracking white trash and Section Eight jokes in no time, guaranteed. We could have taken her and marked her with our scent (onion dip), doubtful that the Smart group would have sent out a search party for her and risk leaving the intellectual bonfire unless she was fetching a microbrew for someone. Converting her would have consumed all of a moment, just a second to rewind to a toothless, drunk woman in nasty panties bellowing, “Who’s gonna get me laid?” and then it would be time to initiate our new member to the dark side with a pig snort, a monkey impression, and the Worm. But that meant we would have had to divvy up the onion dip and remaining snacks one more way, lose a portion of our sofa space, and, well, the Stupid Party isn’t all that Stupid. We allowed Blythe to return to her rightful people, and curiously no additional Smart people wandered into our territory for the remainder of the night.
That is, until several hours later after my friends had left and I was cleaning up. I didn’t know about my husband’s party, but my party had been a raging success. The onion-dip bowl was scraped clean, and for me, that translated into happy party people. Outside, the fire had burned down to a couple of embers. My husband had collected bottles for recycling, and we were turning off the lights to get ready for bed. I noticed that the living room light was still on, and as I turned the corner from the hallway to shut it off, a small little scream escaped from my lungs.
“What?” my husband cried from behind me, struggling to run with his pajama bottoms down at his knees.
There, in the living room, sitting in my favorite chair, looking straight at me, was Reinhold.
“Where are those little chocolate balls?” he asked.
“I’d imagine they’ve made it to your small intestine by now,” I said, catching my breath.
“They were good,” he stated. “There aren’t any left?”
“Well,” I replied, noticing that the fringed edges of his hearty woolen scarf were blackened and singed. “Seems there was one party guest who ate them like they were green M&M’s and he was David Lee Roth.”
“Oh,” Reinhold moaned. “That’s too bad.”
“Man, I thought you went home,” my husband said from the dark shadows of the hallway as he pulled his PJs up.
“No,” our lone party guest said. “I wandered away from the fire to experiment with some shadow puppetry to lavish on my fire mates, but when I came back everyone was gone.”
I looked at my husband, who looked back at me and said nothing.
“Well, it sure is late,” I said with a smile. “You’re the only one . . . left.”
“Legend has it that you can clear a party out in seconds flat,” Reinhold said boisterously. “I must have been perfecting my wolf shadow when you called 911! Heh heh.”
My husband smiled weakly. He tied the drawstrings on his pajama bottoms and moved into the living room. I knew that was it. We were done for.
“Hmm,” Reinhold said, leaning over to glance at something on the coffee table. “Emily Dickinson. ‘I heard a fly buzz—when I died—’ Whatever. Shut in, malcontent, weird chick. Never smiled once in any picture ever taken of her, you know. Couldn’t figure out what to capitalize and not capitalize to save her life. And her use of ellipses! Oh. Aggravating and nutty. Makes me just want to shake her by the shoulders and scream, ‘Let’s send you back to grammar school, shall we, because you obviously failed the class that the school specializes in!’ Ha ha ha. Most of her writings didn’t even rhyme, which to me is nothing short of a cry for help. Again, I want to shake her and say, ‘Keep my attention, will you, sourpuss? Give me a rhyme for ‘content’!”
“Welllllll,” my husband started slowly.
“Bent!” Reinhold called.
“But Emily Dickinson,” my husband tried to continue, “in her time was one of the most innovative—”
“Ferment!” our lone guest sang out.
“You know, to really appreciate Emily Dickinson, you have to understand the era—” my husband attempted.
“Content!” Reinhold shrieked again. “Oh, wait, or did I say that already? I don’t think so. Content!”
I decided to go to bed. And I did. But before I made my retreat, I kissed my husband good night and handed him the phone with a smirk and the words “Remember you have to wake up early tomorrow. At eleven after nine!”
But despite the fact that I had freed myself from the Reign of Reinhold, I couldn’t sleep. He had made me so mad that I did nothing but toss and turn for what seemed like an eternity, and after time passed, I finally looked at the clock. When I saw that it was 3:30 A.M. and my poor hostage of a husband still hadn’t come to bed, I knew I didn’t have a choice.
I put on my robe and went out to the living room, which sounded oddly and suspiciously quiet. That is, until I turned the corner and heard something of a rumble, then saw my husband, his head tilted over the back of the chair and his mouth wide open—at first, I thought Reinhold had killed him with a lethal dose of uncut
boredom or by sucking out my husband’s soul to feed his own empty one—but then, a moment later, my husband engaged in nothing but a full-throated snore. He was completely and utterly asleep.
Across the coffee table, in my husband’s favorite chair, was none other than Reinhold. Reading the Emily Dickinson biography.
And there it was. My unfortunate destiny. People always tell you to marry a nice guy, but when you marry a nice guy, do you know what happens to you? You automatically become the villain, you become Cruella DeVil, no matter if you really are or not, because the nice guy is too nice to do the dirty work. And my husband, clearly, before he fell asleep, was far too nice to tell Reinhold to hit the road and had preferred to drool and twitch in front of him.
“Guess what?” I announced to Reinhold. “I remembered suddenly that I have more chocolate truffles. There wasn’t enough room on the dish for all of them, so I saved some in the fridge. I completely forgot about them!”
“Really?” he exclaimed as he sat up and salivated like an excited puppy.
“Yes,” I replied. “But there’s a catch. I am dying to see your wolf-shadow puppet! You can’t let all of that practice go to waste! And I’ll trade you a truffle for a show!”
“It won’t work in here,” Reinhold said, trying desperately but in vain to get an image of his howling hand to appear on a wall. “We’ll have to go out back to the fire pit.”
“No,” I said as I shook my head. “The fire is out! Hmmmm. Where can we go, where can we go . . . maybe . . . the streetlight against our fence in the front yard will make a marvelous screen for you!”
“Oooooh, splendid idea!” he agreed.
“Okay,” I said excitedly. “You go out and test it, and I’ll meet you once I get the truffles.”
Reinhold shot through the front door and skipped down the steps.
I got the secret-stash truffles, said my good-byes to them, and let them know it was for a good cause. Then I placed them outside on the porch and quickly ran back inside, where I shut the door, dead-bolted it, and turned off the light.
A moment later Reinhold’s chewing face appeared in the window of my front door.
“Hey!” he cried as he knocked so loudly it woke my husband up. “Hey! You locked the door!”
“You and your wolf can huff and puff,” I replied. “But you can’t come back in. Good night, Reinhold. Go home.”
“HEY!” he shouted, still knocking. “You are The Most Unfun Christmas Party Person ever!”
I looked at Reinhold through the glass. “As usual,” I laughed. “You are absolutely right. And don’t you forget it.”
And then we went to bed.
Happy Holidays from the Asshole Family
Dear Friends and Family,
Happy Holidays!
Looks like it’s time for another edition of the Notaro Dispatch and time to dish some dirt on what fun we have in our lives! I haven’t seen most of you since that last little “gathering” at our house several months ago. It sure was a surprise, especially since I thought my husband was planning a birthday party for yours truly! But nope, just a regular old intervention. It was great to see you all, even those loved ones who sat on me when the attendants buckled those restraints. Boy, what a night, huh? It certainly surpassed my wildest dreams (even the ones when I’m barricaded in my house fighting off a SWAT team!). I was only expecting a cake! And suddenly, whoa! There’s a stun gun! Ha ha! Who would have thought you could all keep a little secret so well? Hee hee! Not I, not I, said the fly! No, not I.
No, we did not have a baby this year. But we did move a thousand miles away, thanks in large part to some of you (you know who you are!!) who could not have been more encouraging, sometimes to the point of loading our stuff up in the van yourselves weeks in advance! Wonderful friends, wonderful friends. Which brings me to the point of writing this letter. It feels like we might as well have moved to Mars considering how hard it is to get ahold of some of you guys nowadays. Boy! You move across the state line, and all of a sudden you’ve become a Dr. Seuss character! Laurie Who! Laurie Who!
Ha ha ha!
Well, as I’m sure you’re all dying to know, our move went as smoothly as we could have hoped. Except for the part when we were driving near Redding, California, and I found a lump in my breast. I know, I know, I held my breath, too, and it was indeed a long, tense, quiet drive to the motel that night, and naturally, there were quite a lot of tears. My husband, miraculously, remained so extraordinarily calm it was as if nothing was horribly wrong at all. He is a pillar. Later that night, on the side of a busy highway in a Motel 6 with sticky carpets, I was a moment away from giving my husband permission to remarry, and was getting undressed when I saw a massive and brilliantly colored growth on my chest. Frozen with horror and the thought that I never knew cancer came in a vibrant Caribbean blue, I flinched when my husband swatted at it and it shot across the room and bounced off a wall, and then he went right back to watching a Jack Nicholson movie without a word! I know. A pillar, I told you! Turns out it was just an M&M stuck to my chi-chi. Damn (“dang” for the PG version of the Notaro Dispatch for all of the kids out there!) those renegade car snacks and their ability to imitate tumors, especially when they go sort of soft and squishy with body heat. It’s just like touching bumpy, diseased flesh. We got a good chuckle out of that!
As soon as we drove up to our new apartment, I knew it was going to be a spectacular and wondrous event in our lives. I didn’t know just how exciting it was going to be until we walked up to the front door with our dog, and who came out of the building but one of our new neighbors with his dog! Our dog, Bella, whom many of you are already acquainted with, got so excited that she immediately gave out her “pretend growl,” smiled at the neighbor dog showing all of her teeth, and then jumped on the other dog, trying to kiss the dog’s neck. It was so good to see her want to play like that, and if she could talk (boy, we wish science would hurry up and master that one!), we know she would have just been yelling, “Let’s play, you silly neighbor dog! I’m gonna kiss you! Big kiss! Why is your dad screaming and pulling you away? Let’s play! Let’s play! Boy, and I thought my mom was mean!” Yes, sadly, our new neighbor’s overactive imagination mistook Bella’s friendly advances as aggressive, violent, and lethal ones, but he was one to scream about violence! Pot, meet black! You should have heard the string of profanities he hurled at us and seen the dirty look he gave us! Wow, howdy, neighbor, I said, and for your information, we are not the Asshole Family!! Our last name is none of your business!
Nasty looks or not, I decided that I was going to start the Hello Project and become friends with the people in my building. I took it upon myself to say hello to everyone I met, and if they didn’t cordially respond, I’d yell “Hello!” louder, just so they would realize I was serious. And I was serious. Most of the time it worked, as I believe that diligence and the ability to catch people off-guard—used in combination—can have terrific and pleasing results. Sure, sometimes I’d have to throw in a hearty wave and, on occasion, tap the person on the shoulder as a gentle yet firm reminder, but in general, I was able to easily and happily convert most of my neighbors to “Hello!”
There were, however, some “Hello!” holdouts, and some people that were Hello Project–defiant. Stubborn, unfriendly people! You know, a neighbor who says “Hello!,” particularly in an apartment building where looking out for your fellow dweller is not only important but an essential part of apartment life, is one who is most unlikely to leave candles unattended, convert a bathroom into a meth lab, or go on a concert-volume Supertramp (Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer/Well can you put your hands in your head, oh no!) binge like the guy downstairs after he’s snorted a complete shitload (PG version: crapload) of crystal and you know probably recklessly walks away from open flames that REQUIRE CONSTANT SUPERVISION.
Those are important qualities in people you are sharing walls with, you know. Important qualities. Of course, keeping their impatient paws off of my panties th
e very minute my dryer is done in the laundry room is an important quality, too. That’s important. There’s nothing as startling as turning the corner with your laundry basket on your hip to find an eighty-year-old stranger with her craggly, wrinkled pretzel fingers looping through the legs of your stained underwear that no bleach on earth could conquer. HEY. You’ve never done your laundry in public before, how the hell are you supposed to know that old people will touch anything in order to get to a free dryer? I was so shocked I couldn’t even say “Hello!”
The other people who were “Hello!”-resistant in the building, however, certainly didn’t have such a reason; no one was fondling their underthings or poking at their cotton crotch when a simple greeting was expected from them. There were two neighbors in particular who outwardly refused to engage in the Hello Project by completely ignoring me: Anna, a sullen, huffy art student who had a dog named Camille Claudel, and a guy down the hall who only ventured out of the building to stand by the front door to smoke and cough. He looked like an unfortunate character straight out of a Dickens novel, straddling the physical and the nether worlds, as he surely had a foot in one as he did the other. Over his skeleton was pulled the thinnest layer of skin and muscle required to sustain life, which was almost visibly drifting away from him as the seconds passed. His eyes were consistently watery and rimmed in red, and his lips were so chapped that I just wanted to reach over and brush the flakes off myself. I’ve seen people on telethons that looked healthier. And not once did I ever see him wear clothes; instead, he regularly wandered down and out the door in a dirty T-shirt tucked into pajama bottoms or sweatpants and his little Rocky hat, a navy blue knitted cap that never left his head. I don’t even know if he had hair. He generally always appeared to have a thin veneer of long-standing filth on him, which just added to the overall appearance of his Cup O’ Noodles existence as he sucked down his generic cigarettes and then faded back upstairs like an apparition when smoke began seeping through his most-likely-single layer of skin. One day I saw a glimmer of hope in him as he propped his Skeletor body up against the wall of the building and gave me a nod as I walked out with Bella. I realized my chance, made a move, and jumped on it.